Homeostasis
by bulletproof
Summary: Buffy's back from the dead, but is it too late for her and Angel? Post-'The Gift'.


h o m e o s t a s i s . . . by bulletproof

**h o m e o s t a s i s **   
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)   
characters owned by joss whedon.   
buffy's thoughts in << >> __

Homeostasis: a comfortable set point to which an organism will always try to return 

*****

She stood in her barren kitchen, cradling a steaming cup of tea, running her fingers across the smooth porcelain surface.

She watched without a tear, without a blink on her face, as the rain that slid and sliced at her window reminded her of him again.

Just the way that sunshine reminded her of him.

Just the way that everything that breathed and did not breathe made him move in her like breath, like pulse, vital, humming, golden.

She sighed at the thought. He was golden now. Vital and humming with pulse, with breath.

With a life that wasn't hers.

*****

"Buffy... You're-"

"Alive,"

<< Dead. Dead. I'm dead.>>

"And interrupting,"

<< the life you made without me.>>

"I should go."

<< Why do I breathe?>>

"Wait, I..."

<< Why should you notice me at all?>>

"What, Angel?" she sighed, already bone weary. She'd been here before. Been through this scenario over and over a thousand times in her head. He didn't want her anymore.

She turned to face him and her eyes were dead << Why am I here?>>, lackluster, and yet she remembered being this way before she died << What good is life if he isn't in it?>>.

And to that he really had nothing to say.

"Well, if there's nothing else, I really should get going. Nice meeting you..."

"Fred."

"Fred."

She glanced at the poor, wide-eyed girl again and felt truly sorry for her. She hadn't taken him away from her; it was just the way it was supposed to be.

But the confusion still glimmered in Fred's eyes, along with something bordering on hurt. Oh God, the girl was her and she was Darla, or Drusilla or some other past fling of his, breaking protocol, breaking into his life again.

"Witness me gone," and she managed a small, hollow mockery of a smile.

"Just dropped in to say 'hi',"

<< I need you, I want you, I love you>>

"I'm alive,"

<< I'm dead.>>"See ya 'round."

She turned to go, a little too quickly it seemed, and the momentum carried her to the floor.

Or at least it would have if he hadn't caught her in his arms.

"Guess I'm still working the resurrection spell from my system..." she mumbled sheepishly.

And that's when she felt it. The warmth of the cradle of his arms, the slight pinpricks of perspiration that graced his skin, the heartbeat that thudded and thumped against her chest, ringing clear and true as it countered her own.

He was alive. 

*****

Was it strange that his heartbeat echoed in hers? Strange that the sound of their laughter, *real* laughter, played in her head as the sound of her own << broken, hollow>> one escaped her mouth?

It wasn't so hard to pretend << pretend to laugh, pretend to breathe, pretend to live>>.

Joy came so easily in the form of beaming brides and bumbling grooms, of a child's << someone else's, always, always someone else's>>first tiny footsteps.

And so in her friends' happiness, she found something close to her own.

Xander and Anya's wedding had been the first time she felt something akin to felicity again. Like a blossom, a miracle unfolding in her heart, almost completion, almost peace.

It was the same way when baby Harris was born.

Thus, in time, she started to forget him, like the way you forget you're breathing, forget that you're heart is beating.

But the little things << like sunshine and rain, like pulse and breath>> would always make her remember again. 

*****

She sat on the open wharf, letting the salt sea breeze blow by her, her lip cracking, near-splitting at the gentle onslaught.

He ran up to her then, puffed for breath, and she forced herself to catch the sob in her throat.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

<< Why didn't you make me remember?>>

"About Fred?"

She shook her head, a small, almost imperceptible movement, as if anything bigger would wake her from this dream. God, she couldn't breathe, couldn't think << nothing and everything makes sense>>.

"That you were alive."

"Buffy, I thought you were dead. I didn't know about the resurrection spell 'til Willow called me just now." He explained, snapping shut the cell phone he still held in his hands.

"Not now. Then." She whispered, afraid, so very very afraid << I remember now, why don't you?>> "Thanksgiving. All those Novembers ago."

He was stunned, or emotionless, she couldn't tell. He just stared at her without a tear, without a blink on his face.

<< he doesn't remember he doesn't remember he doesn't remember>>

"I felt your heartbeat."

They stood there for half an eternity, exactly five feet, exactly five breaths between them.

"You weren't supposed to remember..." he said so softly she wasn't sure she'd heard him, but she... she'd felt him.

"The spell did funny things to my head," she shrugged, the slight touch of relief she felt showing in the gentle upturn of her lips, "Willow worked for years to get the spell exactly right. For it to be exactly me, exactly my memories... I guess that day was in there somewhere."

A single stride and he was so close she could feel his breath on her skin, so close she could feel the heat of his warm-blooded body. She remembered feeling exactly this way, kissing him in exactly that spot.

"What do we do now?" he sounded so impossibly young, so lost. He was pleading for her to say the right thing, because he couldn't, wouldn't do it again.

"We remember and be grateful for the moments that have passed," she whimpered, taking an unsteady step away from him, "'cos that's what they really are. Past." 

*****

Past. Dead and buried.

And yet, at some point in time, she was too. But now she was here, living, breathing, << fucking>> laughing. The porcelain shattered into fine slicing slivers on impact with the kitchen wall.

There were times, so many times, she wished she could just forget him, just live and think and *be* without him.

But there he was at every turn of thought, thrumming in her pulse, breathing in her breath.

Her knees gave way and gravity slid her none too gently to the floor, legs and palms cut and torn on the sharp pieces of what remained of her cup.

She rubbed her hands over the tiny abrasions that lay on her arms, fingers coming away bloody on inspection.

She didn't think she could bleed anymore. Didn't think she could cry anymore.

But, as always, she was to be proven wrong.

She gave a start at the sound of her doorbell.

"What?" she demanded, sniffling with blood-shot eyes, blood-stained fingers, arms and legs.

And there he stood, as if conjured from thought << screaming, crying, dying>>, bones soaked with the rain that still ravaged the gentle streets of Sunnydale.

"I couldn't wait another minute without seeing you."

She gulped << sobbed, laughed>>.

"Angel, we haven't seen each other in six months."

But he was still looking at her << through me>> as he always had, was still sodden with rain. And then he was reaching for her, running gentle, shaking fingers over the cuts in her arm.

"You're hurt," he said and she felt like laughing << dying>> again.

She gave a rueful smile, "Nothing I can't handle." << forget, repress>>

"Did I do this?" He asked earnestly.

She looked down, but his fingers tilted her chin upwards. "Hey…" He started, but forgot what he was about to say. Her mouth was so close…

"Hey," she answered, a whisper, a breath.

And then he drew her into the tempest, rain splattering at her limbs, drenching her senses. He pulled her tightly to him, mouth savage and domineering as she wrapped herself around him, feeling home.

His tongue was hot and silken against her own, burning her insides as her skin was doused in rain. God, it had been so long. Where had he been? Why wasn't he here…

She pulled herself away from the intoxicating haven of his lips, pushed away his grasping hands.

"Wait. You shouldn't be here. You should be in LA with your family."<< with the ones that you love.>>

"With Fred?" She nodded, but couldn't meet his eyes again.

"Fred… Fred let me go."

"What?" and selfishly, she gulped down a breath, she felt like she could breathe again, "Why?"

"She smiled at me one day and told me what I knew all along."

"What's that?"

"That I never stopped thinking about you." He replied, pushing wet strands of hair behind her ears, "That I never stopped loving you."

"Never?" she asked, her voice so frightened and small.

"Never," he reassured, taking her face in his hands, "You were my perfect happiness, Buffy… And when I shanshued after you… left… I didn't think I could do it… but Fred showed me how. So I did breathe, did live… but it meant nothing without you."

"Did you love?"

"I did love her, yes… But it's because I loved her that I wouldn't lie to her. She wouldn't let me. She deserves to have someone who loves her the same way that I love you."

She smiled, and her heart was burst, was open.

"I love you too."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and there in the middle of the storm, she found her peace, she found her completion. 

**END   
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